Daniel Flores and Johan Niemann comment on each song on the album Walking
On h2o (2006):
Earth
- The Movie - (Daniel:) This
is a long time dream for me. I have been trying to do this intro for so
long and finally I had a chance. Mia Cold heart of Crucified Barbara did
the vocals on the intro. She has that special teacher vibe which I wanted
to capture. All the strings arrangements took me about a week to create,
allot of hard work. The samples are taken from a speech made by John F.
Kennedy during the cold war period. I thought it fitted perfectly with
the text on the intro. I wanted this song to link together with the second
song so therefore the ending seems so weird.
A
Rabbit In The Hat
- (Johan:) To me, a fantastic opener,
with everyone playing and singing their hearts out. A killer chorus melody
that´s really "hooky". Like the majority of the guitar-solos
on the record, this solo is improvised - and a first take, I believe.
(Daniel:) Yeah, that solo was a first
take actually. This song is about the so called moon landing's and takes
up the question if they did it or not. I'm personally leaning against
the later choice. This song was one of last songs I wrote for the album.
I didn't really feel like the other songs had a cool opener so I took
this chorus which I had laying around on a paper and wrote this whole
song. In the beginning there is a man counting down the lift off of Apollo
11 ship. This clip was really hard to find and is the actual footage.
I had the idea of starting an album with a countdown
so this was
a perfect opportunity.
Equally
Immortal
- (Johan:) Moody start, great
chorus. A very powerful track. (Daniel:)
This song is a bout the 11th of September. Seems like everybody has a
twin tower song these days but I assure you that this one has a totally
different spin to it. This song will provably appeal to a lot of AOR fans
as it has a clear and focused chorus. Andreas really sang great on this
album and on this song he really shows that he is Sweden's best melodic
prog singer. The vocal layers in the beginning are over 20 channels of
vocals. I wanted to make a 10cc vocal intro. I really had fun singing
those. Johan's bass playing is so mature you might think it's made by
Pino Paladino, this provably the best bass playing done by Johan on a
Mind's Eye song ever.
Mrs.
Clair Voyance - (Johan:) This
album has probably more layers of guitar than the others we´ve done,
but it doesn´t seem overly "guitar-sounding" to me. Really
cool harmony-vocal stuff one this one. The main solo is one of three I
worked out in advance. The reason being that I wasn´t comfortable
improvising over all those major chords. :-) (Daniel:)
This song was made back in 2003. The loop on the verse is made with burps
yeah! It's true, I pitched them down and added some reverse effects with
other percussions. It' sounds really cool huh? The instrumental part of
this song really reminds me of Yes (Trevor Rabin era) and I love it.
Sahara
In An Hourglass - (Johan:)
I love the Eastern vibe in this song. Quite a departure for us. There
are a couple of notes in the solo that have EXACTLY the character I was
after, with the last note being perfect! (Daniel:)
I wrote this song on my Casio keyboard while I was in Marocco a few years
ago. The main riff just came to me. The trip was one of the worst trips
I have ever been on and the only positive thing that came out of that
was this song. I spent maybe a year to try to come up with a Chorus to
fit this song and finally I found a match. The intro is spoken in real
Hebrew by a close friend to my wife. She says: you'll never own me like
you own Sahara in an hourglass.
Out
Of My System - (Johan:) Cool
verse, great pre-chorus and a surprisingly catchy chorus. (Daniel:)
This is our nine inch nails song
hahahaha. Well, I have always loved
NIN and I wanted to have a song with a character like they have. The song
is about drug addiction and NIN sound and look like they where on drugs,
thus this song. It's a bit repetitive but I think we need a song like
this to make the album full of different characters. This is the easy
listening song on the album.
Umbrellas
Under The Sun - (Johan:) I
love the distorted vocal sound in the first verse. The pre-chorus reminds
me of ELO - really cool! (Daniel:)
Johan said something in the beginning of the guitar recordings that I
really liked. He said: "This sounds like Jellyfish, as if they had
listened to Yes instead of The Beatles". This song is about Earth
and what we do to ruin it. What fits a song about earth better than the
70's style. The chords on this chorus are really different to what I would
normally write. It's a strange Chorus but still really in your face. This
is my tribute to ELO and Jeff Lynne, one of my all time favourite producers.
Sacred
Rules - (Johan:) I wrote the
main riff to this track, and Daniel and I collaborated on the rest. Another
fantastic, to-the-point melody makes the chorus almost anthemic! This
song has the second worked-out solo. (Daniel:)
This is provably the one song that we never thought we ever would write.
It's heavy and provably the heaviest chorus ever done by us. What really
stand out on this song are Andreas vocals which fit the song like a glove,
he was made to sing this kind of vocal lines. A funny thing happened in
the studio when I was mixing it which gave me the idea of starting this
song with vinyl sound and scratches from an old vinyl player. I just love
how it came out. On the next album we will have more stuff like this.
The
Nazca Lines
- (Johan:) I really like the
Alex Lifeson-sounding guitar in the beginning. I love everything about
this song - the cool rhythmic verses and (again) a killer chorus! The
bridge is just sooo vintage Yes and I love it!!! (Daniel:)
It's a cool mix of how things sounded in the seventies and today's sound.
This is a modern sounding 70's song. I am still amazed about the guitar
sound which is the best clean guitar sound we ever had on any record.
The story behind this song came to me when reading a book about the Nazca
lines during a flight to Rome/Italy. I asked the stewardess about some
paper and a pen and wrote all the lyrics during the whole flight. The
drums on this verse I am particularly proud of as we skip the first beat
on every bar, this is typical for Latin music and it fits really great
with the song and story. Johan guitar solo is maybe the best guitar solo
I have heard in years. This is part one of the 5 song story.
Flight
Of The An.unna.ki - (Johan:)
Ah, the dreaded instrumental! Short and intense, it has the third and
final worked-out guitar-solo. This is the ultimate sitting-around-the-campfire-with-an-acoustic-guitar
song! :-) (Daniel:) Well, this song
is so old it had a spider web around it when I came to pick it out. It
was actually written by me in 1999 in the between our first album and
the second. The problem was that we couldn't do it. A song like this really
needs arrangements, something that we lacked off during that time period.
This part two of the 5 song story, the song is about a woman being abducted
by Aliens. I always thought that this instrumental had an E.T. (The movie)
feeling to it so when the opportunity came to make it an instrumental
intro to the next song, I just had to have it in there. Lot's guitar players
have tried to learn these chords and play it but Johan was the ONLY one
who got it right away. An.unna.ki means: "Those from heaven who came"
and it's a word written frequently in the Sumerian tablets as they spoak
about the "Gods".
Heal
My Karma - (Johan:) Another
amazing song, with a beautiful keyboard solo by Vivien Lalu. I really
like this song and we managed to get a really nice Allan Holdsworth-type
clean tone at the end of the song. (Daniel:)
Part 3 in the five song story. This woman really gives us a full insight
in how a woman would feel trapped in another world. My wife wrote the
lyrics ensuring that it has all the elements that a woman would feel being
in a situation like this. This song was also written around 2001 or 2002,
we tried to play it but we never got anywhere with it. I love the bridge
after the second Chorus and main riff. I remember working really hard
on getting that cinema feeling in that part and I'm quite happy with it.
The ending has a special feeling too. I wrote that ending after seen the
movie "The forgotten".
When
I Whisper - (Daniel:) I wanted
to give the to of the main characters a wedding, thus this song. After
a while I discovered I wrote this song to my wife as a wedding present.
Without even knowing it, I also have this song on our wedding video. People
seemed to completely love it. A friend of mine started to cry when he
heard it the first time. This song is part 4 in the story. I wrote parts
of this song in 2000 and the rest in 2005.
Poseidon
Says - (Johan:) This is my
favorite song on the album. It´s powerful, epic and Andreas is just
singing his heart out! Love the chorus and the backing vocals. The drumming
is outstanding - as it is on the whole album! I realize I haven´t
talked about the bass playing at all. Well, what can I say? It went so
smoothly and felt so natural that the bass parts almost recorded themselves.
It didn´t feel like work! In conclusion, I want to say that I´m
very proud of this record and my fellow bandmates Andreas and Daniel.
We had a lot of fun making this record and I hope that translates to the
listener. (Daniel:) Final chapter
of the story. About the priest who married the couple above. It starts
of with the priest turning on the TV to hear the weather report at 10
am. He then goes off sailing to his death. I actually did the jingle in
the beginning as I couldn't find anything which fitted my vision of the
story. It's sounds quite 80's as most of these jingles sound like. Me
and Johan wrote almost the whole song, he wrote the chorus riff which
I love. I never realised that this song was 11 minutes until I actually
recorded the drums. Nobody seems to think it's that long either, people
are always stunned when I say: "You have just listened to an 11 minute
song!" I hate long songs but this has so much diversity that it will
keep you sharp and interested through out the whole song. I wanted to
end this song in a funny way
So I throw of a TV in the end into
the water
while it's showing commercials. While under the water
it plays the chorus of our song and then goes off to another world where
somebody walks on water ( I wont tell who). I love the fact that I ended
this song with that same chord of which I started with in the intro (Earth
the movie). As Johan told you, I am so proud of this album is crazy
The weird thing is that the album came out so naturally, almost like running
water.
Sign
O' The Times - (Daniel:) When
I started to record this album I realized we were eventually going to
have to write a bonus song for the Japanese fans. A must these days so
it seems
So I thought a lot about it and came to the conclusion
of making a cover of this song which I love. I think the lyrics really
fit perfectly with the whole concept of mine. It really sums up that we
humans are just dumb ass people. The cover is done in the way of that
"Simple minds" did their version in the late 90's.
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